March 14, 2017

The art of building majorities

The BJP’s ideology has more takers than before because it is framing the main issues for elections

The State elections of 2017 clearly demonstrate
that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has replaced the Congress as the
principal national party in the country. It won massive victories in Uttar PradeshandUttarakhand,
and emerged as a big player in Manipur. In Goa it remained the single
largest party in terms of vote share despite a hugely unpopular outgoing
Chief Minister. The only disappointment is Punjab where the party was
routed with its senior partner Shiromani Akali Dal after ruling the
State for 10 years.

The spectacular performance of the BJP in U.P.
should not detract from its formidable achievements in the recently
concluded local elections, where it made huge strides in previously
uncharted territory. In Odisha’s Zilla Parishad elections, the party
expanded its footprint from 36 seats in 2012 to 306 in 2017, snatching
second place away from the Congress to become a formidable contender to
the long incumbent Biju Janata Dal. In Maharashtra, the BJP won eight of
10 municipal corporations with its total number of seats nearly equal
to that of all other parties combined.

Explaining the rise

The electoral success of the BJP
raises an important question. Without being able to meet expectations
built up in 2014, in the absence of a surging economy, and with the poor
decision on demonetisation, how is the party achieving so much success?
There is one obvious reason: Prime Minister Narendra Modi remains very
popular while the Congress party’s leadership no longer resonates with
voters. However, leadership is not the only factor. The BJP is acquiring
hegemonic status in the Indian polity owing largely to ideological
consolidation and its creation of an unparalleled election machine.

The BJP’s ideology has more takers than before because the party
frames the main issues for the elections. Its long-standing ideological
association with nationalism renders nationalism an issue on which it
has a huge advantage over all other parties. Parties that are able to
successfully shape election campaigns around their own issues ultimately
succeed in winning elections. By placing a large emphasis on
nationalism, the party has cleverly tailored its ideological message to
be able to capture the imagination of a larger section of the public. It
has opened ideological battlefronts in many different spheres — from
universities to movie theatres — and promoted conflicts across the
board. It has also placed a large emphasis on other issues that it has
traditionally been associated with, such as national security and
terrorism, patriotism and more recently, corruption.
For a very
long time the Jan Sangh and then the BJP relied almost exclusively on
the hard-line Hindu nationalists who reside with its ideological parent,
the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). This is no longer the case.
Hindu traditionalists, those who are drawn to a conservative Hindu way
of life but are largely opposed to the hard-line Hindutva world view and
its intolerance towards other religions, have now shifted their support
from the Congress to the BJP. This allows the BJP to win elections
without nominating a single Muslim, as it did recently in U.P.

Forging multi-caste coalitions

The
party has also revamped its electoral strategy, one focussed on
widening its appeal by stitching together multi-caste coalitions. As is
widely known, the BJP’s traditional social base is predominantly upper
caste. To increase its support base, it has been building an electoral
machine of its own at the local level in the form of caste-based
coalitions. Fully aware that the party would not receive much support
from the Muslims and perhaps even the Jatavs, the former traditionally
associated with the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the latter with the Bahujan
Samaj Party (BSP), its leaders targeted the smaller groups that don’t
have adequate representation in any of the larger parties. For instance,
the BJP tied up with parties like the Apna Dal and Suheldev Bharatiya
Samaj Party, giving it the support of a large section of the Kurmi and
Rajbhar populations, respectively. It also increased its ticket
allocations to non-Yadav OBCs and non-Jatav Dalits. Its campaign was led
by a galaxy of local and national leaders, together covering an
eclectic set of caste groups — almost a Congress-style coalition — but
without the Muslims and some Dalit communities.

The BJP’s active use of state patronage has also played a big role
in strengthening its national footing. In States where the party has
come to power, and even at the national level, it has actively worked to
break down the existing patronage machinery and replace it with one of
its own. For instance, in Maharashtra, a State ruled by the
Congress-Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) for more than a decade before
the Devendra Fadnavis government assumed office, the BJP has been
steadily dismantling the patronage structures put in place by its
predecessors. Through ordinances and amendments, the government has
managed to severely weaken the hold of NCP and Congress leaders on the
powerful cooperative bodies in the State, including the cooperative
sugar factories which have been under the tight grip of NCP leader
Sharad Pawar for decades. The government not only created a provision
whereby it could appoint independent members to the boards of these
bodies, but also imposed restrictions on the existing board members,
hailing largely from the Congress or NCP, from contesting elections to
particular cooperative banks. At the national level, the Modi government
removed scores of previous United Progressive Alliance-era political
appointees, particularly those notorious for their role in creating the
large NPA (non-performing assets) problem facing the public sector banks
today, and replaced them with its own people.

Risks of rapid expansion

On the electoral front, this
has translated into the BJP aggressively co-opting individuals and
units of other parties to strengthen its leadership. From Rita Bahuguna
Joshi in U.P. to Himanta Biswa Sarma in Assam, the BJP has taken in many
rival leaders into its fold before elections. This resembles the
strategy followed by the Congress in the 1970s, at the peak of Indira
Gandhi’s rule. While in the short term, this strategy is giving the
party immense electoral success and helping it expand its footprint,
just as it had done for the Congress back then, in the medium to long
term it poses grave risks. Many politicians and smaller parties have
joined the BJP bandwagon as it looks the most lucrative option
electorally, and they may desert it at next chance. In addition, as the
BJP continues to bring into its fold leaders and parties from outside
its ideological umbrella, it risks diluting the content of its ideology
over time. If uninhibited, this could also lead to tensions between the
BJP and the RSS.
The BJP has undoubtedly replaced the Congress as
the dominant national party and the cornerstone of India’s political and
electoral system. This development has squeezed the space for
centre-left forces in India’s polity and has given popular legitimacy to
the centre-right narrative on issues of nationalism, secularism and
social justice. As Yogendra Yadav has rightly pointed out, the
centre-left needs a new vocabulary on the issue of social justice as the
BJP has managed to convince a large section of society that the left’s
language on the issue reeks of biases based on caste and religion.
However,
in order for the BJP to remain the dominant national party for a
sustained period of time, it too needs to introspect to ensure it isn’t
compromising long-term success for short-term rewards. Going forward, it
should continue to widen its social base while ensuring it doesn’t lose
its ideological identity. Otherwise, it will only remain dominant as
long as a Mr. Modi remains at the helm. As when individuals acquire
larger salience over ideology and organisation in parties, it leads to
their decline down the road. That is exactly what happened to the
Congress.

Pradeep
Chhibber and Rahul Verma are with the University of California,
Berkeley. Harsh Shah is an alumnus of the University of California,
Berkeley

Map of L K Advani's Rath Yatra of 1990

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